ASHES CAST FROM TRAIN

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 March 1942, Page 5

ASHES CAST FROM TRAIN

AIRMAN’S WISH GRANTED. LONDON, December 30. As a London-Edinburgh express thundered over the high-level bridge which joins England and Scotland at Berwick-on-Tweed, the ashes of an airman were cast from one ol its windows. At the moment they fell over the border in Scotland a white-haired women who had travelled 5000 miles, braving ocean raiders, to perform this rite for her son murmured from the rushing train: ‘‘Now I have returned you to your native soil.” Behind her in the railway carnage a priest who had journeyed with her recited a Latin prayer. With him stood two artillery sergeants, strangers whom the woman had asked, on the train, to witness the ceremony. Reclosing the little casket she held in her hand she turned at last from the window. Then she told her story to the two soldiers just as one of them. Sergeant Cole, told it to a “Daily Mail reporter: Her name, she said, was Mrs. Mary McEwen, and Edinburgh was her home. Twenty-seven years ago she and her son, Harold —then five years old—left Scotland for Canada, where they settled down. As the boy grew up he began to sav more and more often that what he wanted most was to visit the Scotland he no longer remembered and see his mother’s and his own original home. . . , , The war came. Harold joined toe Roya’ Canadian Air Force under the Empire Training Scheme. He had not finished his training when he was killed in a flying accident at Calgary. Mrs. McEwen, remembering his wish, discussed with Father Kaley the possibility of burying Harold in Scotland. The airman was cremated. Passage arrangements were made. The priest and the bereaved mother journeyed to London and to Sc6tland. When their train reached Edinburgh Mrs. McEwen thanked the two soldiers, said good-bye to them, and set out with the priest tor the home her son would never now see.